


This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them.

by fallencrest



Series: variations on the theme of Stannis' gaze [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stannis looks at Ned Stark's bastard and he sees the man he should have been. He sees everything he has aspired to in Jon's immovable justice and his righteous cause.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them.

Stannis looks at Ned Stark's bastard and he sees the man he should have been. He sees everything he has aspired to in Jon's immovable justice and his righteous cause. He sees all that he likes in himself done better and, for all that he sees some of the things he most mislikes in himself in the boy, he can also see all that he has known he could never be and longed for.

Jon is liked, not universally, but widely and broadly. His men long for a smile or a word of encouragement from him in a way no-one does from Stannis.

Stannis has seen Jon fight in the yard with his men, and his swordsmanship displays neither the haltingly strategic style of the inexperienced nor the showiness adopted by many southron lords. He is, perhaps, a little overly aggressive, leaving himself open to attack, but there is something easy and intuitive to his style which Stannis cannot help but credit him for.

And then there's the one, last, most terrible, thing: Ned Stark's bastard is attractive. Attractive in that every eye is drawn to him, as though magnetised. Attractive in his power and in his even-handedness. There is something physical to it, too, Stannis knows, but he cannot quite reason that through.

Stannis believes that beauty is superfluous, has never understood its value - only that it has one, inexplicably, and that its power is incalculable. Stannis knows this at first hand, his experience is a testament to it. Even as a child, he had not been comely, and he had been treated differently because of it. His brothers had both been doted on for their fair faces and playful smiles but Stannis' own countenance had been mired from birth with a stern expression which most seemed to believe unfit for a child. He cannot entirely comprehend why this should make him less attractive - but smiling is supposed attractive by most, it seems.

(Stannis observes that Ned Stark's bastard knows when to be stern and when to smile and he does both with convincing emotion. Stannis himself, in truth, rarely feels the impulse to smile. Perhaps if he had made a habit of it, all those years ago, when still a boy at Storm's End, things would now be different.)

Stannis knows that he should not think of the boy as "Ned Stark's bastard". He ought to think of him as "Lord Snow" or by his proper name, at the least. But Stannis had gone to the Wall to meet with Ned Stark's bastard son and the fact that instead he had met with Jon Snow - a man in his own right; a man who had soon become Lord Snow, the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch - still sits uncomfortably with him. Ned Stark's bastard was a boy whom he had intended to use for his purposes: he was pliable and power-hungry, young and weak. The man he had met, Jon Snow, was none of these things. He was a man who stood firm, on his own terms, and did what he believed was right without the taint of self-servingness. It is easier to dismiss the man by considering him as Ned Stark's bastard offspring than it is to look him square in the eye as an equal though.

It is easier not to have to look at Lord Snow and see the man he should have been and to feel the ache of want which that realisation occasions. It is rare for Stannis to respect a man but he can respect Lord Snow even as he resents him his non-cooperation or his easy smiles. He wants to emulate Lord Snow but, worse than that, he realises that he enjoys being near him. He feels a fool then.

He has never fallen for flattery or been a fool for courtesy but this boy and his iron will have done what other men could not. His relationships with most men (there is one other exception) are purely made for convenience and there is convenience in his alliance with Lord Snow, too, but there is also more than that. He seeks Jon's counsel and his allegiance. Jon's approval begins to mean something to him because he knows that Jon will only approve of a plan he believes is reasoned and just.

He knows that this makes him no better than the men of the Night's Watch who seek their Lord Commander's smile and kind words but he cannot wave away his respect for Jon's opinion when he knows that that respect is grounded in reason. He feels, at times, as though he's betrayed himself in allowing himself to hold Jon in such high regard but he cannot escape the truth of it. Jon is the man he should have been and it is more productive to admire him than to resent him for it.

So, Stannis admires him and he lets himself look, lets himself want and tries not to think too much about it. It is easier to pretend that Jon Snow is nothing more than Ned Stark's bastard but the easy way is rarely the right one, so Stannis stops pretending, for all that it pains him to look Jon in the eye and not to deny the truth of what he sees there.


End file.
